On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < [email protected]> wrote:
> ... > > So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can > change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective > evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from > there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on > a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in > my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just > that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion. > I'm interested in hearing more about the needs *you* feel the lists are meant to serve. I'm guessing some of this is a strategic matter for the Swift team, not something that all of us here on the list could fully articulate. The valuable things I see are: - anyone with an idea can discuss it with the community, regardless of their experience with PLs and compilers. - multiple community members, and core team members, can collaborate in a discussion or author a proposal. - the community can watch and learn from discussion and implementation processes amongst the core team. - the core team can disseminate strategic vision and internal decisions that otherwise would have to wait for the release notes or WWDC, or at least a blog post. None of these seem specific to any particular message board/system, except that they are much more easily attainable with a highly asynchronous system, like you mentioned. > > Ted > > > On Jan 23, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Ole Begemann via swift-evolution < > [email protected]> wrote: > > Obligatory prior discussion sheds, er, I mean threads: > > https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo > n-20151207/001537.html > https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo > n-20160725/025692.html > / https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo > n-20160801/thread.html#25765 > > > I haven't followed the previous discussions closely. As someone who mostly > follows the discussions passively and only rarely posts something to the > list, I have two major complaints with the current situation: > > * The disconnect between the messages in my mail client and their URLs in > the list archive makes sharing or bookmarking messages a major pain in the > ass. If it were possible for each message to contain its own permalink in > the footer, I would be much happier. It seems this feature is available in > Mailman 3 [1], but the Swift lists seem to be running on Mailman 2.x. > > * The web archive has very bad usability. I suppose design is a matter of > taste, but having the archive organized by week is just wrong. This means > that readers will regularly miss significant parts of threads that cross > week boundaries without even noticing it. > > I don't like the mailing lists (and hadn't subscribed to any for close to > a decade before Swift), but fixing the above two points would go 90% of the > way for me. > > If you're counting votes, I'm also +1 for trying out Discourse. > > Another, less important complaint: > > * Readability is inconsistent because people use different formatting and > email allows full control over HTML. I assume a forum that allows Markdown > strikes the ideal middle ground between some control over formatting but > not needlessly messing with font sizes etc. > > I can understand if the Swift team is hesitant to switch to a forum. If > you have a working mailing list infrastructure everybody at the company is > used to, migrating to a forum is a pretty big undertaking and potential > disruption to the workflow. I'm not certain conversations will be much > easier to follow in a forum. > > I found it very uncomfortable to read the mailing lists in my normal mail > client because I want a totally different UI for the two tasks of reading > swift-evolution vs. reading my regular mail. But this can be solved pretty > easily by using a separate mail client only for the lists. I actually ended > up reading the lists in Thunderbird via NNTP on news.gmane.org. Since > Gmane is currently reorganizing and not adding new lists, this means I > can't do this for new lists like swift-server-dev, but other than that it > works well. The biggest downside is that I am limited to one device because > read status isn’t synced across devices. > > [1]: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2011-October > /072379.html > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution > > > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution > >
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